BIOGRAPHY:  Andrew Jackson Smitherman

Born in Childersburg, Alabama on December 27, 1883, Smitherman was the second of eleven children.  He moved to Oklahoma Indian Territory, with his parents James and Elizabeth Phillips Smitherman and siblings, when he was a child.  He completed secondary school in Centerville, Iowa, before attending Kansas and Northwestern Universities.  Smitherman earned a law degree from LaSalle University Extension School in Chicago and Boston.  Upon his return to Oklahoma, he found an opportunity to combine his law expertise with an interest in journalism.

In addition to law clerking for Attorney W.H. Twine, owner of the Muskogee Cimiter, Smitherman convinced Twine to let him take over the management of this fledging newspaper.  In a three year period, from 1908 to 1911, he positioned the paper in the national media market as a recognized and respected publication.  In the process, he also secured his own niche in the newspaper field.  In 1909, he accepted a leadership role in the Western Negro Press Association, later the Associated Negro Press, as Vice-President.  The following year, he assumed the presidency of this organization, a position he held for eleven years.

During this period in Muskogee, Smitherman also experienced major changes in his personal life.  He married Ollie B. Murphy, a native of Arkansas, on June 29, 1910.  The Smitherman’s had two children while in Muskogee, Toussaint and Carolyn.  Three other children were added to the family in succeeding years.

Smitherman made the decision to leave the Cimiter and establish his own newspaper, in 1911.  Initially, he founded the Muskogee Star.  But in 1913, he decided to move to Tulsa, where he established that city’s first African American daily newspaper.  The Tulsa Star was located in the city’s Greenwood District.  Over a period of eight years, in addition to being the publisher and editor, Smitherman’s willingness to be a “crusading reporter”, often put him at odds with the establishment and on several occasions put him in harm’s way.  

Through his editorials and reports, he exposed corruption, challenged complicit officials and demanded equal treatment of Blacks.  He personally intervened in at least two threatened lynchings, at great physical danger to himself.  As a result of his activities, he earned the respect of whites as well as blacks as an individual of great moral integrity and a community leader.  In 1919, he was invited to join the Governor’s Committee to greet and welcome President Woodrow Wilson.  Smitherman was the only African American given an opportunity to speak during the president’s visit.   The evidence of Smitherman’s community building in Tulsa is voluminous.  The facts, however, regarding his direct or indirect involvement in activities that ignited the race riot are less clear.

In the aftermath of the Tulsa Riot and Massacre, Smitherman’s life and that of his family, was changed immeasurably.  After living in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts for a few years, Smitherman moved his family to Buffalo, New York in 1925.   In 1932, Smitherman returned to the newspaper business with the establishment of the Buffalo Star. With a one hundred dollar loan and the support of his wife, who worked as a composer and pressman, he opened a small office next door to a funeral parlor.

Even at the height of the Great Depression, Smitherman was able to put out a newspaper that earned critical support for its quality and high standards.   On the occasion of the 2nd Anniversary of the Star, Smitherman printed a number of testimonials from several leading citizens from across the nation; including his old boss, William H. Twine; his friend, Monroe Trotter, Editor and Publisher of the Boston Guardian and an original founder of the Niagara Movement; Roscoe Dungee, Editor and Publisher of the Oklahoma Black Dispatch, I.W. Young, President of Langston University, along with several local leaders. 

The Buffalo Star’s motto, ““Freedom, Justice and Equality for All, Love of God and Our Fellow Man; Doing All the Good We Can for Our Community” proclaimed Smitherman’s manifest and long-held personal philosophy, which grounded his life’s work as an activist-journalist, community leader, a fearless advocate for his people, and a faithful believer in God and in his fellow man.   It was, no doubt the same personal philosophy that propelled his work in Oklahoma as the publisher/editor of the Tulsa Star. 

Smitherman published the Buffalo Star, later renamed the Empire Star, for nearly 30 years.  His Buffalo years reflected the same community leadership, civic contributions and personal accomplishments of his life in Oklahoma.  His dedication to his newspaper is punctuated by the fact that he died at his desk while writing his autobiography in 1961.  In this short space, a detailed account of the Buffalo years is not possible, however, a future publication honoring Uncrowned Kings will provide further detail of this remarkable man’s life.